Palestine

Tom Clarke Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Grahame M. Morris]

I respect the current Foreign Secretary and previous Foreign Secretary; I believe that they are men of good will, as is the Minister. Unfortunately, however, our rhetoric falls short of action. We need to address the situation on the ground and see how we can move things forward. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) has implied, we have witnessed an alarming expansion of illegal Israeli settlements. Estimates suggest that some 560,000 illegal settlers now control 40% of the land area of the west bank.

We need to think about a number of issues. The construction of an illegal de facto annexation barrier continues unabated. Restrictions on movement continue to be a daily source of outrage for ordinary Palestinians. The economic decline and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which we have debated in this Chamber on previous occasions and which has been caused by a cruel and highly illegal blockade, has left 1.8 million Palestinians without adequate shelter, sufficient food or access to safe drinking water. Not only is the status quo immoral and illegal, but it lays the foundations for the next major escalation.

It is not enough to focus exclusively on negotiations while failing to hold Israel accountable for its human rights violations and its continued annexation of Palestinian land. More than half the members of Israel’s Government, whose political positions range from the right to the far right, reject the two-state solution and the international consensus out of hand. Recently, the Israeli Defence Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, said:

“I am not looking for a solution, I am looking for a way to manage the conflict and maintain relations in a way that works for our interests”.

By “our interests”, he means the interests of the Israeli side. This summer, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who had previously claimed to support a two-state solution, let his mask slip and revealed his true intentions:

“I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.”

For decades, Israel has maintained the rhetoric of peace and negotiations for an international audience, while simultaneously entrenching and deepening the occupation. Now even the rhetorical fig leaf of a negotiated solution has been stripped away, leaving Israel’s expansionist aims naked and clear for all who have eyes to see.

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the excellent role he is playing in the debate. He will be aware that one of our former distinguished colleagues, Martin Linton, has prepared an excellent briefing for the debate. Among the disturbing points that he made was the fact that there were 182 Palestinian children in Israeli prisons in September 2014, and that Israel is the only country systematically to persecute children in military courts. That, and much more about the way in which children have been treated, is wholly repugnant.

[Grahame M. Morris]

My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point, as the Minister and other Members know. Other Members have been to the occupied territories and seen how Palestinian children are treated. They are not treated as Israeli children—the children of settlers—are; Palestinian children are subjected to a different system of law, in military courts. That is one of the many issues, such as the demolition of Bedouin villages, which I have also seen, and the failure to tackle settler violence—